Strategies for Multilingual Learners

In a recent conversation with Dave Bakker, the topic turned to students who are multilingual learners (ML). Across the country, this is the fastest growing population of students! In Texas, the public school ML population can average as high as 20%. 

Luckily, science lends itself to language development! Here are some tips you can use in your science classroom to assist your language learners:

🗣️Identify Critical Vocabulary: What are the four or five key words that are essential to understanding your unit? Once you have boiled this list down, find different ways to work the terms into the lesson. Your MLs will benefit from frequent and varied exposure to these words. For example, you might pre-teach with a word wall, give clear visuals to accompany the words, and provide lots of opportunities to speak, hear, read, and write these terms. 

🗣️Peer Interaction: Giving MLs chances to authentically communicate with classmates is such an important step in building their confidence. Structured small-group interactions help students practice their communication in a new language and reinforce that critical science vocabulary. One way to help ensure success is to give students roles in their groups so that everyone has something to contribute. You can give a prompt that includes many words that students can use in their answer, and you can give time for reflection before answering so MLs have time to process the question and their answers.

🗣️Hands-On Experiences: When students can experience science concepts in action, it transcends language barriers. When possible, it’s great to connect science vocabulary with the “real thing” or models. This helps cement the meaning of the critical terms as students are learning to recognize the words in written and spoken form. Active learning also makes concepts "sticky" for student brains.

🗣️Incorporating Technology: Years ago, many of us would need a translation dictionary to simply communicate with our learners whose primary language was different than our own. Now we have Google Translate and powerful new translate features in PowerPoint:

• Near the end of this page (click here), you can find an add-in and a link to a mobile PowerPoint app that does real-time translation for your audience.
• You can easily pre-translate PowerPoint files using the Translate button under the Review menu.

Although the goal is for MLs to become comfortable in their new language, translation technology can really help when we just want a way to build relationships with students in the beginning of the year. Our beginning-of-the-year lab safety introduction can also incorporate translated text so you can be sure that the rules and emergency procedures are understood. This is another time where critical vocabulary matters - words like "eye wash" shouldn't be learned for the first time in an emergency!

Do you have MLs in your classroom? I’d love to hear strategies you use to help your language learners succeed!

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